The Last Day of Summer

A loose adaptation of a 19th century poem, this enigmatic period piece plays out three ways a final parting could have gone.

  • Rebecca Shoptaw
    Director
    Girl, Sweetvoiced, Middlemarch: The Series
  • Rebecca Shoptaw
    Writer
  • Rebecca Shoptaw
    Producer
  • Abbie Bosworth
    Key Cast
  • Eva Bloom
    Key Cast
  • Steven Lehmann
    Key Cast
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Romance, Experimental, Period
  • Runtime:
    11 minutes 56 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 2, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    200 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United Kingdom
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Rebecca Shoptaw

Rebecca Shoptaw is the writer, director, cinematographer and editor behind a number of award-winning short films, along with the critically-acclaimed web series "Middlemarch: The Series."

Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Le Monde, and i-D magazine, and screened at festivals internationally such as BFI Flare, NewFest, and the Pilot Light TV Festival.

She has an abiding interest in adaptation, and is always experimenting, trying to figure out new ways to use cinematic language to take what seems untranslatable in writing and get it onscreen.

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Director Statement

For me, this film is really an exploration of ambiguity. I wanted to find a way to express that thrilling sensation of mystery that comes when you're about to meet someone and don't know what will happen. The film plays out each of the different ways our main character imagines her meeting with the other young woman could go, but leaves her - and the audience - suspended in that moment of uncertainty before they actually meet.

I chose to set the film in the past as a way to think about our modern relationship with the historical record, how difficult it is to draw conclusions about how people in the past really felt about one another, when any evidence we have is always subjective and incomplete.

We may each have our own different interpretations of what some relationship in the past was really like, based on letters, what we hear second-hand, etc., but we, like the main character in this film, will always be to some extent suspended in that moment of uncertainty.